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On this day: January 18

2012: The English Wikipedia, Reddit and an estimated 7,000 other smaller websites coordinate a service blackout to raise awareness against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). The protests were based on concerns that the bills, intended to fight copyright infringement arising outside the United States, contained measures that could harm online freedom of speech, websites and Internet communities.

2011: Sargent Shriver, the husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver who served in both the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, dies at the age of 95 in Bethesda, Maryland. Shriver was the driving force behind the creation of the Peace Corps and founded the Job Corps, Head Start and other programs as the architect of Johnson's "War on Poverty" in the 1960s. He also served as the United States Ambassador to France and was George McGovern's running mate in 1972 as the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president, replacing Thomas Eagleton, who had resigned from the ticket.

2010: Author Robert B. Parker, best known for his crime novels about private detective Spenser, dies of a heart attack at age 77 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Parker's Spenser novel series was developed into the television series "Spenser: For Hire" in the 1980s. He also created the character Jesse Stone, a troubled LAPD detective who becomes a police chief in a small New England town, who has been played by Tom Selleck in a series of TV movies.

2008: Georgia Frontiere, the majority owner and chairman of the NFL's St. Louis Rams and the most prominent female owner in a league historically dominated by men, dies of breast cancer at the age of 80 in Los Angeles, California. Frontiere had inherited a 70 percent ownership stake in the then Los Angeles Rams upon her husband's death in 1979. During her three decades in control of the team, she relocated it to her hometown of St. Louis in 1995 and saw the Rams win a Super Bowl title in 2000.

2005: The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, is unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France.

1997: Boerge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.

1996: Citing irreconcilable differences, Lisa Marie Presley files for divorce from Michael Jackson in New York after barely 20 months of being married.

1991: Eastern Airlines shuts down after 62 years in business due to financial problems.

1990: Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for crack cocaine use and possession in a sting operation by the FBI and D.C. Police. Although he was charged with three felony counts of perjury, 10 counts of misdemeanor drug possession, and one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to possess cocaine, he would be convicted of only one of the drug possession charges. That summer he decided not to seek re-election and in October 1990 was sentenced to six months in federal prison.

1986: A cover version of "That's What Friends are For" recorded by Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Elton John and Stevie Wonder as a benefit for American Foundation for AIDS Research hits No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song would spend four weeks on top of the chart and make $3 million for the cause.

1983: The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic gold medals to his family. Thorpe won the medals in the pentathlon and the decathlon at the 1912 games, but they were stripped after it was found he was paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics.

1980: Actor Jason Segel, known for his TV work in "How I Met Your Mother," "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" and for movie roles in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," "I Love You, Man" and "The Muppets," is born in Los Angeles.

1978: The roof structure of the Hartford Civic Center collapses after a heavy snowfall just hours after the University of Connecticut men's basketball team defeated the University of Massachusetts. Nobody was injured and the building was heavily renovated and re-opened on Jan. 17, 1980.

1977: Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control announce that they had sufficient laboratory evidence to implicate a previously unknown strain of bacteria as the cause of Legionnaire's Disease, now named Legionella pneumophila. An outbreak of the potentially fatal infectious disease in Philadelphia in 1976, largely among people attending a state convention of the American Legion, led to the name "Legionnaires' Disease." After the bacteria causing the illness was named, the name of the illness was changed to legionellosis.

1975: The TV sitcom "The Jeffersons," focusing on George and Louise Jefferson, an affluent black couple living in New York City played by Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford, premieres. The show was launched as a spin-off of "All in the Family," on which the Jeffersons had been the neighbors of Archie and Edith Bunker. The show would run through June 25, 1985, lasting 11 seasons and a total of 253 episodes.

1974: A Disengagement of Forces agreement is signed between the Israeli and Egyptian governments, ending conflict on the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War.

1974: The TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man," starring Lee Majors as Steve Austin, a former astronaut with bionic implants working as a secret agent, premieres. The show would run for five seasons, turning Majors into a pop culture icon of the 1970s and spawning a spin-off, "The Bionic Woman" with Lindsay Wagner, as well as several television movies featuring both eponymous characters.

1969: Wrestler, mixed martial artist and actor Dave Bautista is born in Washington, D.C. As a professional wrestler in the WWE, he wrestled under the ring name Batista and was a six-time world champion. He's appeared in the movies "The Man with the Iron Fists," "Riddick" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" and will also appear in the 24th James Bond film, "Spectre," set for a November 2015 release.

1967: Albert DeSalvo, who claimed to be the "Boston Strangler," the murderer of 13 women in the Boston area, is convicted for a series of unrelated robberies and rapes and is sentenced to life imprisonment. DeSalvo's murder confessions have been disputed and there was no physical evidence linking him to the deaths, and since he was killed in prison in 1973, debate continues today regarding which crimes he actually committed.

1964: "I Want To Hold Your Hand" enters the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 45. The first Beatles' song to catch on in the U.S., it would hit No. 1 on Feb. 1 and hold that spot for seven weeks before being replaced by "She Loves You."

1961: Hockey Hall of Fame center Mark Messier, who played 25 years in the NHL with the Edmonton Oilers, New York Rangers, and Vancouver Canucks, is born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is second on the all-time career lists for regular season points (1,887), playoff points (295) and regular season games played (1,756), and won six Stanley Cups, five with the Oilers and one with the Rangers.

1958: Willie O'Ree, the first black player in the National Hockey League, makes his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. The Canadian-born winger would also appear in two more games that year, and came back in 1961 to play 43 games, scoring four goals and 10 assists in his NHL career overall. O'Ree spent the majority of his professional hockey career in the minor leagues, winning two scoring titles in the Western Hockey League between 1961 and 1974, scoring 30 or more goals four times.

1957: Three Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses land at March Air Force Base near Riverside, California, becoming the first aircraft to circle the world nonstop. The bombers circled the globe in 45 hours and 19 minutes, using in-flight refueling to stay aloft.

1955: Actor and director Kevin Costner, best known for his roles in "The Untouchables," "Bull Durham," "Field of Dreams," "Dances with Wolves," "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and "The Bodyguard," is born in Lynwood, California. Costner won two Academy Awards (Best Picture and Best Director) for "Dances with Wolves" and has also directed "The Postman" and "Open Range."

1954: English actor Sydney Greenstreet, best known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, including "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca," dies of complications from diabetes at the age of 74 in Hollywood, California.

1952: Actor and comedian Curly Howard (right), best known as a member of the slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges, dies of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 48 in San Gabriel, California. Howard was born Jerome Lester Horwitz in 1903.

1938: Curt Flood, the All-Star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1960s who became a pioneering figure in the legal attack on baseball's reserve clause that foreshadowed the era of free agents, is born in Houston, Texas. He died at age 59 on Jan. 20, 1997, after developing pneumonia while being treated for throat cancer.

1936: British writer Rudyard Kipling, best known for works of fiction such as "The Jungle Book," "Just So Stories" and "Kim" as well as poems such as "Mandalay," "Gunga Din" and "The White Man's Burden," dies of a perforated duodenal ulcer at the age of 70 in London, England. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient.

1933: Film director John Boorman, best known for the movies "Point Blank," "Deliverance," "Excalibur" and "The Tailor of Panama," is born in Shepperton, Surrey, England.

1933: Engineer Ray Dolby, the creator of the Dolby noise reduction system and a co-inventor of video tape recording, is born in Portland, Oregon. He died of leukemia at age 80 on Sept. 12, 2013.

1919: W. O. Bentley founds the luxury automaker Bentley Motors Limited in London, England. Bentley had been previously known for his range of rotary aero-engines in World War I, the most famous being the Bentley BR1 as used in later versions of the Sopwith Camel. The company's first production car would be delivered in September 1921.

1913: Actor, singer and dancer Danny Kaye, who starred in movies such as "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," "The Inspector General," "Hans Christian Andersen," "White Christmas" and "The Court Jester," is born David Daniel Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York. He died of a heart attack at age 74 on March 3, 1987.

1911: Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco Bay, marking the first time an aircraft landed on a ship. Two months earlier, Ely had performed the first take off from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia, taking off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher aircraft.

1904: Actor Cary Grant, best known for roles in movies such as "Gunga Din," "The Philadelphia Story," "His Girl Friday," "Notorious," "An Affair to Remember," "North by Northwest" and "Charade," is born Archibald Alexander Leach in Bristol, England. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 82 on Nov. 29, 1986.

1903: President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII, making the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.

1892: Actor and comedian Oliver Hardy, one half of the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, is born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia. He died on Aug. 7, 1957, at age 65 after suffering two strokes earlier in the month.

1882: Author A. A. Milne, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems, is born in London, England.

1862: John Tyler, who became the 10th president of the United States in 1841 after President William Henry Harrison died one month into his term, dies at the age of 71 in Richmond, Virginia, from what is now believed to have been a stroke.

1779: Lexicographer Peter Mark Roget, best known for publishing, in 1852, the "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases" that would eventually bear his name as "Roget's Thesaurus," is born in London, England.

1778: Capt. James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands."

1733: A white bear cub, captured in Greenland, is exhibited for the first time in the U.S. The 9-month-old cub, named Ursa Major, was shown in a cage at Clark's Wharf in Boston's north end.

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